


shadowkat | The God Complex - Doctor Who

by shadowkat67



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, Episode Review, Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor/River Song
Kudos: 1





	shadowkat | The God Complex - Doctor Who

I quite liked that episode - "The God Complex". More so than well everything else I watched this week. It has to be the most creative and unpredictable thing I've seen. It looks like a Monster of the Week, but is everything but that. Also, it quite nicely, brings to a closure the arc.

During it, I thought why is it that most, if not all, science fiction tv shows and movies, along with fantasy, tend to slant towards "horror" eventually, if they don't go there directly? It's why I couldn't watch Doctor Who as a small child. Now, it doesn't bother me. I think the role of horror - novels, movies, tv shows is to throw our fears up there, so we can see them and laugh at them or scream at them, and then let them go. Somehow, after seeing the exaggeration of our fears...the reality becomes easier to handle? Or maybe it serves the same purpose as urban horror legends, campfire stories, and fairy tales - cautionary tales - this is what happens if you do this, this is how you handle it, and this is how you avoid it?

Much like the previous two episodes...the monster wasn't scary once we got to know it, so much as misunderstood...not a real monster at all. Also, this episode resolved the whole Amy as damsel bit quite nicely.

1\. Monsters of the Week

In the episode with the child...who was afraid that if his parents found out what he was and not really their child they'd send him away...so he kept turning all his fears into wooden dolls or throwing them into his cabinet, with the dollhouse, where they became wooden dolls. Yet in reality, he wasn't a monster, just a scared little boy with a power he couldn't control.

Then in the episode, The Girl Who Waited, the monster is the robohealers who are trying to save Amy with kindness, instead they isolate her alone for years. She hates the Doctor. The world is set up to heal, but it is monsterous to those who accidentally take the wrong turn.

Finally in The God Complex, the monster is a minotaur who feeds off people's faith. He just wants to be adored. And now, he just wants to die, to be at peace. He's in prison for going to planets and setting himself as a God, the inhabitants of the planet got secular - and set up a prison, and it is designed to feed him by grabbing whomever floats by - and he feeds off their face which is triggered by their worst nightmare.

In each of these scenarios - the monster is not unconquerable, it's not a god. It's just well, a guy who can't drive his space-ship. The monsters of the week are all metaphors in a way for the Doctor himself. The madman in the box.

His desire to be adored, to be worshipped, to -- as Rita tells him when he says he will save them, "isn't that a God complex"? I'm the Doctor, he tells his enemies, be afraid! He wants to be the hero, the savior, yet here's the thing about people who want to be adored as heroes...they can without quite realizing it fall into being villains. All heroes are villains and vice versa, depending on your pov.

My favorite bit? The Minator's speech to the Doctor - "For a timeless ancient creature, drenched in blood of innocents, death is a gift." The Doctor assumes as do we that the Minator is talking about himself. The Doctor, says, "Die in peace." The Minatur grumbles..."I was not talking about myself." And the Doctor has the same look he had on his face when River Song said more or less the same thing in A good man goes to War.

What I love about Stephen Moffat and RT Davie's reboot of Doctor Who - is the Doctor isn't really a hero, at times, he's an anti-hero. And often neither. If anything their series seems to be a cautionary tale about hero worship and protagonist privilege.

2\. Amy

Amy's undying faith in The Doctor has almost destroyed her. As the Doctor himself notes - your undying faith in me, your desire to see me as the hero who will always save you...has put you in danger time and again.

Because of her involvement with the Doctor - she lost her child. Her child became a time-lord. She became a wooden doll. Got taken by the Silence. Lost 36 years of her life and got it back again. And almost got devoured for her faith - her faith in him. She has said since the beginning, The Doctor will save me. It was how they met - please send someone to save me from my nightmares, and the Doctor appeared and did. Then he went away and did not come back again until she was and adult, but scarred from waiting all those years.

Doctor looks at her and says, Amy, you have to let go of it, you have to see me as I really am. I'm not a hero. I took you away with me because I was vain, I wanted to be adored, to be worshiped, I wanted to play the brilliant hero. It's time, Glorious Pound, Amelia, that you and I see each other as we really are. I am just a madman in a box.

And it's then, as she lets go of her faith in the Doctor, that the Doctor finally calls her Amy Williams, not Amelia Pound. He no longer sees the little girl that he left behind, forever etched in his memory. He sees Amy, the adult, a married woman who has a child and a life. And Amy sees the madman in the box, the funny friend...not a hero. The Doctor is heroic at times, sure. But not a hero to be worshiped.

3\. Rory Williams

Rory clearly sees the Doctor for what he is. When the Doctor is talking to Rita - Rory notes to Amy, every time he starts to chat someone up in that way, I feel this overwhelming need to notify their next of kin. To which, Amy just giggles. Rory ducks, thinking she'll hit him with her shoe, which she normally does. But not this round - of course she'd have to unlace it first.

Rory's faith is in himself and Amy, not in the Doctor. The Doctor says he doesn't have it in anything, that's not really true. We all have faith in something, whether it be an external entity, another person, our planet, or ourselves, or all of the above. Faith and Skepticism are roommates after all, in all our souls. I've always found people who say they don't believe in or have faith in anything to be a little unself-aware or narrow in their definition. They are talking about religion of course or religious faith. But often in a way that is...well a generalization, which I'd be wary of. There's a slippery slope in both directions - the view that religion or the belief in something other than yourself or greater is horribly naive and dumb or the view that not believing in something other than yourself (etc) is horribly soulless and self-centered. Neither view is true or accurate. Any more than the statement that religion is evil. Or for that matter the Doctor is either a hero or anti-hero. There are no absolutes. No either/or. No black and white. Just the gray in between.

I think Rory sort of gets that. Rory has faith in love, his love for Amy and her's for him - it's why he waited for her as a Centurion for over 1000 years.

What I found fascinating about the episode which is a sort of take-off on the Greek Minator story, was that none of the main characters real fears were shown. Well except Amy's. The Greek Minator story take-off - is the story of the hero hunting the dreaded Minator through a maze, except here instead of the Minator being the pet of a God, the twist is that the Minator had set itself up as a God and he wants to sup on the hero's faith, not his fears as we are initially lead to believe. It's not fear we must let go of and suppress, it is faith. Or rather false faith. Because I don't think it is faith in general, but faith in falsehoods. Otherwise, Rory would have found his room too.

Agree with Moffat, Hotels are scary. Looked at a few apartments in buildings that reminded me far too much of a hotel. Nixed them right off the bat. The set decoration in this episode - depicting hotel corridors reminded me a great deal of Kubrick's The Shining.

For a while I did not think we'd see Amy's fear - but it is clearly that the Doctor never came. It cuts to her faith - in the Doctor, that he would come and save her. We see young Amelia Pound praying for/to him. Her magical friend and savior.

We don't see the Doctor's fear - but we are told that he has found his door. And he says, but of course, it's you.

When the Doctor asks Rory if he's found his door. Rory states no, but then after traveling as long as he has with the Doctor, he was never scared. Past tense? Asks the Doctor. Rory shrugs. It's not until later that Doctor realizes Rory has no faith that the Minator would want to sup on...which is why he didn't find his door. But the Doctor clearly does have faith in something...other than himself. But we aren't told what.

The episode leaves questions unanswered. Also Amy at the very end, when the Doctor says Goodbye to her and to Rory, after buying them a new flat and a car...which Rory thanks the Doctor for, asks the Doctor to tell her daughter to visit her. If you should bump into my daughter in any of your travels, could you tell her to visit her old mum. The car that Rory thanks the Doctor for reminds me a lot of the one Mels stole in Let's Kill Hitler.

Finally, it feels like these episodes are leading to or explaining what happens in The Impossible Astronaut - or why The Doctor goes to his death knowingly and without any fight. Much as the Minatur went to his. This is not Ten who is afraid to die, or Nine who valiantly sacrifices himself, but 11 who is shaken with guilt...and remorse and perhaps his own need for redemption. His arc and River's seem to shadow each other or book-end is a better word. River...redeems herself in Forests of the Dead...where she dies to save millions, and ends up being downloaded to the Library. And the Doctor dies in Impossible Astronaut...perhaps to send River on her own journey, making me wonder...if he'll join her there...in the library. Don't know, I like to stay unspoiled for Doctor Who. And it can go more than one way of course.  



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